Eighth+Grade+Weekly

**W****eekly Point of V****iew. .** **.**

 * **Date** || Date: September 30, 2010 ||
 * **Where are you on your long-range plans, pacing, and content standards?** || With little variance, we are covering the forces that impact motion and Newton's laws. We anticipate this standard will take another 2-3 weeks to cover. ||
 * **Please share minutes from your discussion. Be sure to include feedback on the levels of bloom’s being utilized in your classes/assessments each day.** || Lunn and Eisele are reviewing distance and displacement calculations through the warm up and are covering Newton's Laws. This will continue through next week. Students will create balloon racers to investigate those Laws. Students will have to be able to analyze a given situation to determine how Newton's Laws (and the applicable forces) are at work. Westmoreland's classes will be focused on balanced and unbalanced forces and will use that to lead into Newton's laws. Students will be provided with supplies and will be asked to use those supplies to illustrate Newton's Laws. This activity is a great opportunity for students to get creative. Dissinger is asking students to critique student work to help them take more ownership of their work and effort levels. Students will all know what is expected of them as they continue to work on motion and forces. All 8th grade science teachers will be helping students begin the science fair process. Honors students will be required to participate and regular students will have the opportunity. This will culmonate at the family science night in January. ||
 * **Comments ~ Concerns ~ Needs** || Ping pong balls - Westmoreland will buy ||


 * **Date** || Date: 10/14/10 ||
 * **Where are you on your long-range plans, pacing, and content standards?** || We are finishing or have finished forces and motion. Some have started waves. ||
 * **Please share minutes from your discussion. Be sure to include feedback on the levels of bloom’s being utilized in your classes/assessments each day.** || We always use higher level blooms on warm-ups, tests, quizzes and labs. We discussed ways to modify current labs and how to distribute resources. ||
 * **Comments ~ Concerns ~ Needs** || Mazie and Missy are still requesting science magazines. ||


 * Date || October 22, 2010 ||
 * Where are you on your long-range plans, pacing, and content standards? || Transitioning from motion and forces to waves, light, optics, and sound. ||
 * Please share minutes from your discussion. Be sure to include feedback on the levels of bloom's being utilized in your classes/assessments each day. || Students performed well on the benchmark, which covered all first nine weeks standards. Items for reteaching: inertia, Newton's second law (F=ma), interpreting negative correlation graphs.

Several new items were purchased to manipulate light and we investigated how to use them, and what activities we could design around their use.

In our new unit, students will be asked to describe, distinguish, apply, rank, interpret, predict, construct, plan, conclude, compose, and experiment. ||
 * Comments ~ Concerns ~ Needs || A class set subscription to National Geographic Explorer or Science News would still help our students complete their current event requirements. Please let us know if this is a possibility. ||